Procurement managers need to get better at communicating change

Procurement managers need to get better at communicating the need for change, and make use of a more diverse set of tools to do so, according to research from online platform Procurious.

Procurious’ Procurement Gen Next research surveyed more than 500 supply professionals about career development and their attitudes to social and digital media.

It found 51% of professionals only rate their manager as ‘OK’ when it comes to communicating the need for change.

“Given that change management is an integral part of many senior roles in the profession, this perception should be improved,” said the report.

It also found that most respondents do not feel their managers are using the full suite of communication tools available when driving change. Three-quarters (75%) said their manager only sends an email, rather than using multiple approaches like face-to-face briefings, social media or online collaboration tools.

More than 50% of respondents are members of three or more social media sites and 87% rated online platforms as either “moderately”, “very” or “super” important to them professionally.

Speaking at ProcureCon Europe in Berlin, Procurious founding chairman Tania Seary said: “Gen Next is actively engaging in social media. They connect and share online with people across the world. [Businesses] need to offer these tools.”

The survey found that only 23% of respondents had actively crowd-sourced a solution to a problem on social media, but 76% said they believed crowd-sourcing on solution media would bring in diverse ideas.

“Business issues are too big for one person to tackle alone,” said Seary. “To shock-proof our profession we need to move out of our silos and connect. Many hands can cope with disruption.”